On Monday 10 April 1967, Australian current affairs program This Day Tonight made its debut. The show, whose name was quickly shortened to TDT by viewers, aired weeknights at 7.30pm on ABC television. It changed the way Australians consumed news, blending hard-hitting stories with satirical segments and political parodies. 

In an era of great social and technological change, TDT creators wanted to move away from the traditionally deferential attitude of engaging with politicians to a more probing and adversarial style. Opinionated and unpredictable, cheeky and subversive, the show garnered both ratings and controversy.

Senior TDT producers recruited a team of young journalists with big personalities and gave them permission to adopt a bold and, when necessary, antagonistic approach to their subjects – to prod and provoke, to publicly call out the inadequacies of those in power, and to highlight injustice and hypocrisy in Australia’s social and political landscapes. As a result, program makers were constantly under attack from figures of authority trying to silence or at least tame these troublesome journalists.

The show was frequently accused of bias, with criticism coming from both ends of the political spectrum. On the one hand a politician could expand their public profile by connecting with the show’s large and devoted audience, on the other, they may find themselves at the pointy end of the show’s wickedly sharp satire.

The clip above is an excerpt from TDT’s 10th anniversary episode. It begins with earlier footage of Labor Premier of South Australia Don Dunstan under pressure from one of the show’s journalists, before returning to 1977 to hear Dunstan telling Clive Hale his view of the crucial role that this type of current affairs program fulfills in fostering a healthy democratic society.

Unafraid to challenge authority, TDT spoke directly to ordinary Australians in a way no program had before. It alternated serious interviews and reports with light-hearted segments, caricatures and animations lampooning those in power. It went further than traditional commentary previously allowed. While the show’s jokes and caricatures were entertaining, they also triggered new ways of seeing particular subjects, and situations, including Prime Minister Gough Whitlam and the dramatic political events of the 1970s.

As the high-profile TDT worked to keep politicians and other figures of authority answerable and accountable to the public, members of the public in turn wrote to the ABC about the program. While some viewers objected to the show’s irreverence, others welcomed this more ‘modern’ type of reportage.

The show’s producers and journalists believed it was important to listen and engage with their audience, to improve their ability to resonate with the Australian public, and to present multiple viewpoints on the topics it covered. The scores of letters in the National Archives, from Sydney to Perth (as each state had its own edition, with national segments), reveal how they dutifully responded to both praise and criticism. In the 1974 letter below, founding TDT producer Ken Chown illustrates how useful it was to have 'bright and vocal' audiences who wrote in to 'keep TDT on the right track'.

The Archives' collection contains fascinating examples of ABC programs themselves, as well as paper records, including scripts, minutes, memos and the voices of ordinary Australians, captured in tens of thousands of listener and viewer letters as well as reports from switchboard operators. The collection holds letters between TDT staff (especially host Bill Peach) and the public, providing insights into how the ABC and the public understood and valued each other, and changing social and political values. The letters go all the way up to 1978, when the show officially ended (though it morphed into 7.30) and inspired primetime current affairs programs on the commercial networks.

In conjunction with the Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage project LP220200578: ‘The ABC, its Archives, and its Audiences’.